7. The Point

to be made by all who are offended at being relegated to the status of "consumer" that is responsible for continuing to BUY everything being sold to make a profit for the wealthy.

Stop buying everything and refuse to accept what they are trying to fool you into believing... I think one problem with our population is that we have been led down the flowery path to think that believing in something is all we need to do. If you are going to believe in something, believe in the idea that you can be free of this serfdom we have let ourselves be wooed into.

Wake up and stop giving in to them, you have been seduced and should take action against those who violated you. Stop feeding the beast.

14. Yes!

There is an idea that we are powerless victims in all of this. And yet I still see my friends and neighbors filling their giant cars with cheap junk in order to feel "happy." I made some homemade presents this year, and not all of the responses were positive. One person asked with a sneer, "So you made this?" I laughed (at her) and said yes, I spent hours meticulously finding the best ingredients and then put hours of labor into it. Because for her, it must have seemed as though I was being cheap, when in fact I was giving a gift from my heart. She wasn't sneering when she tasted it, BTW. But for me, it just seemed so sad that a woman who has every need filled for her would sneer at something because it seemed to homey. Oh well, it sucks to be spoiled.

Anyway, we do have the power. The power to bring jobs back to this country by putting a premium on American-made goods. We can support small business who take good care of their employees. Who support their community. We have fallen for flashy advertising when we have all the power. Businesses follow the money. I went to the store the other day and every package was screaming Organic! though I am always wary of big companies selling foreign organics. But if we as consumers demand those things, they'll do it in a heartbeat.

26. You are EXACTLY right. I wasn't amazed to see some of the replies from the so called "Progressives"

to the OP's post. Their view is that corporations have a stranglehold on us and there is nothing that we can do other than elect politicians that will strip the rich of all their money.

None of those "Progressives" seem to realize that they can start businesses that reflect their values and treat their workers like human beings that have aspirations. Yes, rents can be high in big cities, but some companies can be easily started up in the suburbs. But starting a business is hard, with failure being a constant possibility. The so called "Progressives" seem to rather not take a chance on being personally humiliated, they would rather have wet dreams about Bernie Sanders becoming the President that will roast the 1%.

38. That's exactly what I did

Jumped into manufacturing, all top quality, made in the USA. Many people ask why our things cost a few dollars more. They want the cheapest, because they're buying so many things. I tell them it's a great VALUE because our products will last for years. And many people, after buying the cheapest gizmo three or four times as they always fall apart instantly, finally end up buying ours. How much money was wasted on that adventure? If you buy quality, but less, you not only will save money in the long run, that product will be a pleasure to use every time because it is made well and made to last.

People don't understand value anymore. They want new, new and cheap, cheap. Over-consumption, conspicuous consumption, keeping up with the Kardashians. They have forgotten what it's like to have a toaster that lasts for 30 years or sheets you can wash five million times and they just get better and better. We're not trying to cheat people with inflated prices--we have very low markups--but that is how much quality goods, not made by slave labor costs. I'm hoping quality becomes a status symbol one day!

54. So true. Or the ones who claim to be liberal and then invest in Wall St.

That money is literally being used to deny the effects of climate change. To press the heel of conservative politicians & dreams into our faces. To strip the natural world and its denizens of its lifeblood and its future for the sake of a few extra bucks today.
Liberal in their minds only, in action, something much more insidious and deadly for the future and happiness of all life.
If you want to stand against something, not standing with it is a good start.

55. Yup.

I think one big issue is that the corporatists have seen how easily lured the majority of the population are... iphones, BIG screen TeeVees and computers, hypnotizing us. And they hypnotize us into thinking that convenience is what we should strive for which, of course means that we need to buy their crapola convenience food and stuff so that we can be convinced that we need to toil away to keep money in their banks... all at the expense of our minds, and all other living things from the wildlands and wildlife to us.

Here is some interesting poetry that was written several years ago about how the Native Americans were duped by the European christians but you can easily fast forward to now and substitute the word christians for corporations and it still is telling and apropos...

10. So ...

28. Take a chance on starting up a small business that compete with big business. Too many people on

the Progressive side view that possibility with some contempt, but I promise you that the only way we will start to win back control of our economy and food supply is to start offering alternatives to products from big business. I for one would relish a well made sweater of the type that I could find when a company like Nordstrom was still using small USA craft shops to build thinks like sweaters. I hesitate to single Nordstrom out in this way, because that company is pretty much the only big USA retailer that is still trying to find and sell USA made clothing.

46. Buy from local merchants instead of chains

Develop a barter system with your neighbors and like minded friends.

Buy ingredients for food, instead of overpriced processed food full of chemicals and non-foods.
support your farmer's markets.
take the time to find and buy American made stuff...LOTS of people on ETSY are Americans, all sorts of clothes to buy.
All sorts of other made in America stuff on Etsy, excellent prices.( I get my Pyrex and Corning ware on Etsy..all "vintage" and the real deal)

It takes time, planning ahead, learning, reading up on how to do it..fortunately the web is full of resources.
You will be amazed at how growing in consciousness helps you see the next step to take. Never fails.

volunteer at a food bank, or any place that is taking care of those need help.

16. Only one. Now that's funny.

But you do have a very good point. de la Boetie, about 1550 in France, in his "Discourse on Servitude", pointed out that the tyrants (same for our modern equivalent) had nothing except what the people had given them, and that if they people would simply quit allowing them to take, quit acting as their arms and legs and eyes, they tyrants would collapse under their own weight.

The people, of course, ignored him, and later began to chop off the heads of the tyrants. That sort of backfired, and thousands upon thousands of people lost their heads, including the people who started the revolution. And the wealthy took over.

You are correct, and also supply the answer. People need to find a way to get assets, and then run them for themselves, denying the corps anything they can do without until they are big enough to change things. That's what Mondragon did, under a fascist dictator no less, and it has worked out for them, at least better than others.

But that technical problem is not the biggest one. The biggest one is the thinking of the people.

"The most powerful weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." Stephen Biko.

There are 316 million people in this country, but only a few million really control it. The other 300+ million could change it tomorrow. Except that a hundred million or so care more about putting out the flames in their master's house than they do about their own burning down,
Until that changes, until you open a window in their mind, unfreeze their thinking and find a way for them to realize that their condition because of their own actions, it won't matter what the corporations own, because if you take it back, that group will kill you and take it back to them.

So we are most likely doomed, because that is hard, and it's so much easier to get out the pitchforks and pretend that's the answer. Also, that makes for much better. tv

25. Sure. But for most people their heads aren't there, and that is the problem.

People have to have their minds open to such answers, and there is no evidence that a meaningful percentage of people are even open to listening to them, much less acting on them. There is a cab company, and the steelworkers are experimenting, and there are thousands of cooperative. But meaningful would be hundreds of thousands, or controlling 25% of GDP, and we are so far away from that it's more like fantasy.

We have multiple generations taught that they can just show up and profit from the exploitation of resources, whether they be natural, or others. Now they are the resource being mined, but their heads are still in those other decades, expecting it, somehow, to return.

Political parties and corporations, for all their talk, profit from people's inaction, so there is no motivation on their part to change it, (or even acknowledge it) and anyone who thinks so is delusional.

There are a few people trying to help but, many of whom are incompetent to do so, but even when they are decent change agents, like in the period from 1865 to 1920 they are either ignored, despised, hurt, or killed. PArtly because their numbers are so pitifully few, and partly because they misunderstand the nature and scope of the problem they are trying to address.

So yeah, the answers are out there. But until people are ready to understand what they need to do, you can tell them about it all day until you are blue in the face, and they will let you fall over and die. Then spit on you.

I don't mean we should quit, or that it is hopeless. I'll believe differently when I see proof, instead of just hearing spin from do-gooders. But until someone trying to fix a problem accurately diagnosis it and comes up with an effective plan to address the real problem they are just treating symptoms, while the patient continues to die.

40. As I said in my other post, it doesn't mean not try, though that's one

fine way to duck responsibility, to pretend that one's effort must take so long the effect can't be seen. That sounds like something Wally in the Dilbert cartoon would say to his boss.

People shouldn't mistake busy work for effective effort, because if it doesn't result in change it didn't work. One can make noise, be noticed, bring awareness, but unless it freakin' moves something, it's mostly just about their ego.

I fervently believe It's Quixotic to expect change from today's efforts, where a few thousands of people march in the streets, pat themselves on the back for their effort, talk about how scared the wealthy must be. ALL the black and white numbers tell us that inequality and poverty continue to worsen, that not a fucking thing is changing except for the growing bank accounts of the wealthy and the slowly diminishing ones of everyone else. What if those who want change just keep at it, and their efforts are totally inadequate to the task? How will they ever know as long as their answer is "none of this is going to happen quickly". What if they are wrong? How would they know?

I heard much of this same shit back during Jimmy Carter's presidency. He even came out and told us how we could heal ourselves, fix our economy, make ourselves stronger.

Then the people voted for Reagan. And now we have a president who admires Reagan, wants to be like him.

From one of his speeches...

"I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

There was a time in this country when hundreds were going to prison, when there were pitched battles in the street, when they were marching hungry children past the White House, when organizers were actively carrying the battle to the bastards,and some were murdered. But for a time they won much greater victories. And then the government allied with business and the business unions to put a stop to it, and the people sat down. Maybe they were tired, maybe they lost hope, I don't know.

But I do know that, despite all that effort, damn little has changed in roughly 150 years.

One should always have hope! But they shouldn't substitute that for asking hard, probing questions and evaluating the real impact that organizing work is having on people's lives ('cause that's what we are talking about) and insisting that, if they are going to do it, that it have a plan that will effect change. Else it's just feel good busywork, something people can occupy themselves with while others die.

On edit - Speaking of things that can be measured, and numbers that can be verified... I am a big fan of what Occupy COULD be, (or perhaps could have been, we will see). I went out to hold signs and talk to people at our local one a few times. But what I find it interesting that every day we were "encamping" we lost 15 manufacturing businesses in the U.S. Every single freakin' day. Did that every day in 2012 as well, which means that we lost 64,087 manufacturing PLANTS in the past 12 years, according to the stats at the Federal Reserve Research Center.

That doesn't count the roughly 2 million families that were foreclosed on and thrown into the street over the past 2-3 years, the students that took on debt that will follow them to the grave, the businesses that were allowed to walk away from debt when it became too onerous, the banks that have avoided investigation and prosecution while being given $1.2 trillion this past year to take profit from...

It's like a nightmare version of "It's a Wonderful Life" where in "every time a protester waves his sign, a bankster gets a grand..."

30. No. You start small with the objective of making a difference. If you blanch at paying $1.5 more

for the sandwich made with bread from a small organic baker who sources locally and meat and cheese produced on local farms without the help of antibiotics, then you are part of the problem that you hate. Food with healthy ingredients cost more because those ingredients are produced by small companies that don't pump their products up with additives or other potentially dangerous ingredients. Look at the decisions that you make every day, then start thinking of what you can do to make a difference. The difference may be no bigger than joining an organic produce and meat CSA, or shopping once per week at your locally organic baker who sources as much as possible locally. Please come back and talk when you have done those things, I think you will return with lots of ideas in your head about how YOU can change the equation.

20. One small way to fight coporatism?

BUY LOCAL! If you have a choice, avoid big box stores. Shop mom-and-pops. Shop farmers markets. Shop local bakeries. Shop craft fairs. Go to locally-owned restaurants instead of chains. I always try to think, "From how far away did this come?" I understand rural dwellers often have no choice but to shop a Wally World and I'd never condemn them for doing that, but too many of us DO have a choice and just don't take it.

27. I am fortunate enough to live in the middle of farm country

(Central California) and we have MANY farmers' markets here. The produce is traveling maybe 20 miles at the most, was picked that morning, and man can you ever taste the difference. We also have lots of craft fairs around here where you can buy unique, hand-made items directly from the craftsperson/artist. Both are more popular than ever. Some of our farmers markets get written up in the foo-foo magazines. Here's one of our oldest and check out the variety:

42. Here on DU: Frugal & Energy Efficient Living group,

Some things I have been doing for years:
Buying ONLY used clothes.
Buying ONLY used shoes.
Buying ONLY used vehicles.
Buying ONLY used furniture, towels, cooking utensils, books, and appliances.

I have increased my purchases of organic food, including deer (shot with a used rifle), and mainly local restaurants. My water consumption is -900 gal/mo (total C if Austin util. bill is -$100/mo.), gas averages -$30/mo; I drive -8,000 miles/yr., go to free shows, and tip well.

Thinking about dropping cable and getting an antennae, and dropping this damned smart phone in favor of a burner, and use only wi-fi on my used laptop.

49. Recommended 1000X and kicked too.

52. The corporate world is obsolete. It served its purpose for a period of history, but now

it's time to move on. None, can be well served by the corporate world in the 21st century. It, is an obsolete model. Now, it has turned into a shameless scam existing for nothing more than fleecing the flocks and destructive greed. It no longer serves society to benefit all of society.

I was thinking just yesterday, that we need a very easy and quick way to identify and
support "only" those interesting in making earth a better place for "all" than only enhancing their greed, selfishness and destruction. I would more than willingly stop purchasing anything from an outfit that did not support the benefits to "all" of society. The greedy and outrageous would eventually dry up for the most part.